Directors have to manually close the portal. If it's not closed, you can still submit, even it's past the deadline. In order to see when an applicant submitted, we have to click a separate link for each applicant - and I would bet most of us are NOT doing this because it's a pain to look at and we just assume everyone submitted on time. I had an applicant email me to point out she submitted an application 6 hours after our deadline and she hoped she would still be considered. Honestly, I wouldn't have known had she not pointed it out, and there could've been others who submitted late and I'll never know (I wasn't going to get out of bed at midnight to close the portal and I'm not going to go through and check when each applicant ended up submitting their application). And since she pointed it out, it made me wonder if she'd miss other important deadlines. Other directors may have different opinions, but that's my two cents.
